What is it about?
Photos by local professional photographers Mbouda (Cameroon) took photos on commission that show everyday life, including those for administrative documents. Many from the 1970s and 1980s show the influence of French fashion. But there is no hint to the UPC anti-colonial rebellion and the violence that acomaonied it.
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Why is it important?
The images discussed show local, Cameroonian depictions of themselves. The absence of violence is telling. These are the images people wanted to remember, not the other ones that could have been taken
Perspectives
Hard to dsicuss what isnt there. But thinking about photos that could have been taken but weren't enables us to read the silences in between the photos that have survived.
Professor David Zeitlyn
University of Oxford
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Intimacy in a violent context: photographs from Mbouda (Cameroon) in a time of troubles, Africa, February 2024, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0001972024000056.
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